Australian Perspectives on Migration

4-6 October 2018 | Großer Vortragssaal der ULB

with a reading by Isabelle Li & music by Celine Yap (Little Foot)

The 2018 biennial GASt conference will address cultural, social, historical, legal, and (geo)political issues related to the contemporary global challenge of migration and displacement – with more than 60 million displaced persons world-wide – from an Australian perspective. The interrelation of these issues is apparent in the long history of migration on the Australian continent, from its earliest settlement to the colonial period, to the 20th and the 21st centuries. From its colonial beginnings the political, legal, social and cultural implications of migration have featured prominently in the formation of the Australian nation and its cultural "imaginary" (Anderson). This is evident in exclusionary politics during different periods of a White Australia Policy, and the forced detention of aliens from 1992 onwards.

More recently, campaigns like the "Pacific Solution" or "Operation Sovereign Borders" foreground the necessity to reflect the situation of immigrants and refugees in Australia in a global context causing migrations for political, economic and climate-related reasons on an unprecedented increasing and accelerating scale.